Tales of the goings on at Hollyford Pottery, near the tiny village of Stockleigh English in Devon, England

Saturday, 4 April 2015

Wassail and wedding pots

We've come to the end of our stay in Devon for a little while. We head to Bedford for the weekend to see my Mum, then on from there, to Scotland to make pots, fire the wood kiln and of course, in four weeks time, to get married! It seems strange to think that next time we're here we'll be husband and wife.

During the past few days I've been working on this wassail pot. The last one I made cracked, which was very frustrating, as it took ages. This is a replacement and will go in the wood firing in Scotland in a couple of weeks.

It was a nightmare to slip, each of the birds has to be really well fixed on

It's survived the bisc firing and is all packed up in the van, ready to head North in the morning - lots of bubble wrap required on this pot.

This is a jug that Hannah made. I'm decorating it to go with the big jug in my previous post, to hold flowers in the church on our wedding day. We're hoping to make a collaborative pot for each of the window sills.

They take an awfully long time to decorate, there's still a lot to do to this pot before it's finished.

It carries both our signatures, as you would expect, Hannah's is rather neater than mine!

We're still having problems with our glazes. As you can see in this photo, it keeps 'shivering' off the rims and handles. We've tried all sorts, changed the glaze recipe, changed the firing temperature and lots more, but still we're losing lots of pots. It's frustrating and financially crippling. Fortunately the technical man at Scarva is working on it and thinks he can make our glaze 'fit'.

I had to work late in to the night last night to yet again re-make this order of two handled loving cups. It's the third time I've made the order - at least they get better each time, practice makes perfect and all that, but I really hope that these ones come out successfully.